Research Catalog

Title

Committed styles : modernism, politics, and left-wing literature in the 1930s / Benjamin Kohlmann.

Author

Kohlmann, Benjamin, 1981-

Publication

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2014.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

vi, 223 pages; 23 cm

Summary

Committed styles' offers a new understanding of the politicized literature of the 1930s and its relationship to modernism. It reclaims a central body of literary and critical works for modernist studies, offering in-depth readings of texts by T.S. Eliot and I.A. Richards, as well as by key left-wing authors including William Empson, David Gascoyne, Charles Madge, Humphrey Jennings, and Edward Upward. Building on substantial new archival research, Benjamin Kohlmann explores the deep tensions between modernist experimentation and political vision that lie at the heart of these works. Taking as its focus the work of these writers, the book argues that the close interactions between literary production, critical reflection, and political activism in the decade shaped the influential view of modernism as fundamentally apolitical. Intervening in debates about the long life of modernism, it contends that we need to take seriously the anti-modernist impulse of 1930s left-wing literature even when attention is paid to the formal complexity of these 'committed' works. The tonal ambiguities which run through the politicised literature of the 1930s thus effect not a disengagement from but a more thorough immersion in the profoundly conflicted political commitments of the decade. At the same time, the study shows that debates about the politics of writing in the 1930s continue to inform current debates about the relationship between literature and political commitment.

Series Statement

Oxford English monographs

Uniform Title

Oxford English monographs.

Subject

• 1900-1999
• 1900-talet
• English literature > 20th century > History and criticism
• English literature
• Englisch
• Politische Literatur
• Die @Linke
• Moderne
• Modernism (Literature)
• Engelsk litteratur > historia

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 201-217) and index.

Contents

'Responsible progagandists': I.A. Richards, T.S. Eliot, and Cambridge Experiment -- An honest decade: William Empson and the uses of poetry -- Between communism and 'Purity' of style: the revolutions of English surrealism -- Social facts and poetic authority: the political aesthetic of mass-observation -- Bad dreams: Edward Upward and Marxist prophecy.

Call Number

JFD 14-4990

ISBN

• 9780198715467
• 0198715463

LCCN

2013956947

OCLC

869726313

Author

Kohlmann, Benjamin, 1981-

Title

Committed styles : modernism, politics, and left-wing literature in the 1930s / Benjamin Kohlmann.

Imprint

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2014.

Edition

1st ed.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Oxford English monographs

Oxford English monographs.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 201-217) and index.

Chronological Term

1900-1999

1900-talet

Research Call Number

JFD 14-4990